Good morning, everyone. I am bringing the meeting to order.
First of all, I would like to mention to the committee before we start that the briefing book that was provided to us at the beginning of the study contains a description of past studies concerning employment for people with disabilities, with links to those studies and their main recommendations. You may want to make note of that in the event you wish to have a look at those.
I would also inform you that the analysts have prepared a list of recommendations from the latest report of the committee on employability, which had a series of 10 recommendations. Those have been forwarded to the last witnesses from HRSDC, who will be reporting back to this committee with respect to what has been done or not done relative to those recommendations.
Keep in mind that previous studies are provided by link in the material that was provided to us, our briefing book, at the commencement of this study.
With that, I would like to welcome James Roots from the Canadian Association of the Deaf; Paul Cudmore, executive director of the Canadian Paraplegic Association; and Robert White, executive director of Spinal Cord Injury Canada.
Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being here with us. We will have each of you present—maybe not necessarily each of you, but I think two of three will be presenting—and after the presentation there will be questions and answers from each of the parties here.
With that, we'll start with the first presenter, Mr. Cudmore.